Wikibooks:New page patrol

This is an obsolete archived project page that is preserved for historical value. It may contain out-of-date information.

Please note that the patroller flag was retired when English Wikibooks enabled FlaggedRevs. The job that was once done by patrollers is now done by reviewers. Most of the content of this page is still accurate; we just use a different interface to do more-or-less the same thing. — Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

New page patrol means watching the new page feed to find pages which are vandalism, nonsense, spam, misnamed, don't fit within project scope, are duplicates, etc. In the past this has been done entirely manually, which meant lots of work was duplicated. A new software feature allows us to make sure efforts don't overlap.

At Special:Newpages you can see all new pages. The combo box indicated by the purple arrow allows you to search by namespace. The Hide link in the green rectangle allows previously-patrolled pages to be hidden to reduce duplication of efforts. The red arrow shows an unpatrolled page on a yellow background. Let's patrol that page.

The red rectangle indicates the mark as patrolled link at the bottom right corner of the page. This will mark the revision we are viewing as patrolled when it is clicked after reviewing the page.

After marking the page as patrolled, you can either return to Special:Newpages by clicking the link indicated by the blue arrow. If the page needs to be fixed or tagged, you can simply click the edit tab from this view (indicated by the green rectangle (the move tab is also available).

At Special:Log/Patrol, you can see all recent patrols. You can search using the fields in the red rectangle. The entry indicated by the green arrow is the one just completed. The green rectangle indicates a link to the revision we marked as patrolled. The entry indicated with the purple arrow is an automatically-patrolled page. admins and bots have their page creations automatically patrolled, as indicated by (automatic) in the purple rectangle.

New page patrol has long been a maintenance task Wikibookians performed, but a new software feature that was enabled recently makes division of labour easier. Until the feature was enabled, there was no way to tell which pages on Special:Newpages had already been looked at by another user. This feature allows users with the sysop, bot, and patroller rights to mark pages as patrolled. Patrolled pages appear on a white background on Special:Newpages; unpatrolled pages appear highlighted in yellow. You can hide already-patrolled pages, and you can sort by namespace (the "all" option is now fixed too).

To mark a page as patrolled, you must open it from the link provided on Special:Newpages. Towards the bottom right corner of the page, a "mark this page as patrolled" link appears. Click it to patrol the page. You can now click the link to go back to Special:Newpages to continue patrolling, or you can click the edit tab to edit the page if needed. It's best to mark a page as patrolled, then go back and tag it/fix it/whatever.

Admins, bots and patrollers have all pages they create automatically marked as patrolled.

All pages that don't meet those requirements, but have been tagged or otherwise dealt with

Remember to mark pages as patrolled, then go back and tag them or fix them or whatever (this ensures that you don't forget to go back to patrol the page, but also makes sure that it's marked as taken care of as soon as you start - there won't be duplication of efforts).

Don't mark as patrolled

Anything you want a 2nd opinion on

Patrol only these namespaces: Main, Wikibooks, Cookbook, Wikijunior. Watch for strange stuff in the other namespaces, but you don't have to patrol them.

Once you've read and understand this page, and the policies and templates linked from it, list your request on WB:RFP, where an admin will process it. You should do some new page patrolling without the right so other new page patrollers can see your work. This lets us gauge whether you know what you're doing before letting you mark pages as patrolled because once you have the right, nobody is likely to check your work. Remember that patrolled pages can be hidden, and patrollers rarely examine previously-patrolled pages.